Glad to See You by America

This is a track from America's 1974 release, Holiday. George Martin produced the album, as he did other America projects. Martin's arrangement on this and Holiday's other tracks adds depth and beauty.

I've always loved this song despite its misuse of God's name in the chorus. The interesting thing though, is that the composer and lead singer, Dan Peek, later became a Christian and a pioneer in the Christian contemporary music movement of the 70s and 80s.

The chorus and the whole song can, in fact, even be read as a plaintive cry to God, as in:

God, I'm glad to see you
I thought you'd left me far away

I remember in my atheist days writing a song that included the line:

Sometimes, God
I feel like I'm
A million miles from heaven
And I can't find my way back home

In my mind, at a conscious level, I was treating God as a concept, the way politicians who thoughtlessly end their speeches by saying, "God bless America."

But I think that in my subconscious, I sensed the alienation from God and others that goes with thinking that you're a creature without a Creator.

Who knows what may have been going on in Peek's subconscious when he composed the song?

Incidentally, in this period, Peek was dealing with substance abuse issues.

In 2011, he died in his sleep of a rare and poorly understood disease, fibrinous pericarditis.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]